1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a counter for counting falling tokens and a game machine provided with the counter and played with tokens.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 1 shows a counter for counting tokens according to a prior art disclosed in, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 11-134468. The counter has a rotary disk 1 onto which tokens 3 are fed. The disk 1 feeds the tokens 3 into a discharge port 5 by centrifugal force. The tokens 3 at the discharge port 5 are aligned and transferred through a path 7 to a counting sensor 9, which counts the number of the tokens 3. This counter is installed in, for example, a slot machine, to correctly grasp a payout ratio, i.e., the ratio of tokens inserted by players into the slot machine to tokens awarded to players, so that the slot machine is properly controlled to promote wholesome playing without boring players or unnecessarily increasing a gambling aspect.
When applied to a pusher-type game machine, this may lose player's excitement and interest.
The pusher-type game machine has a table on which many tokens are present, and a slider that reciprocates behind the tokens on the table. A player inserts a token into the game machine, and the inserted token randomly falls on the table so that, due to the inserted token, the tokens on the table may be pushed forward by the slider and may fall from a front end of the table. The tokens fallen from the table gather at a return mouth. The player may enjoy the sound made by the falling tokens.
In the pusher-type game machine, the number of tokens to be returned to a player must be counted before the tokens reach the return mouth, and the counter mentioned above is incapable of achieving this.